The D’neeran Factor (107 page)

Night in the middle of the day. Light enough elsewhere on
GeeGee,
but dark in Michael's room. Head on Hanna's lap again. She stroked his face and worried, she would make herself sick with worry. It seemed to her that Michael was dissolving, breaking up into pieces and floating away.

He was unaware of her anxiety. All he felt was the softness
under his head; he might have taken root. Those soft soft hands on his cheeks: part of his own flesh.

“Not as primitive as all that,” the soft voice said.

“How do you get that?”

“They speak of machines with accuracy and without fear. They distinguish between native crops and imports. Your father told you of other planets, other people; do they know that's where they came from? And the imports? And the machines?”

He struggled to remember. “It's all so far away,” he said.

“Well, did they think the machines were made at the Post?”

“Some were. But—no. They thought others had always been there. A finite number. That the Post was a great treasure house, and the masters released from it what they would, gave us what they wanted to give.”

“How do you know this, Mikhail? Is it something you were told?”

“Maybe.” He was certain that he had spoken truth, and it was the first thing he had been sure of that did not come from the relived past of the trance, but from some store of general knowledge.

“The beasts that pulled the carts—you called them oxen, but they weren't. Were they native?”

“I guess so. I think so. Yes. They must have been. Sometimes they were hard to manage. We were careful about breeding. It must have gone back years, breeding to make them docile.”

“So isolated,” she murmured. “So terribly isolated.”

“But
it
was good.” His eyes stung. “Is it bad to be isolated? When life is so good? The peace.”

“It made you too vulnerable. The community, I mean. Tell me about the relocation,” she said.

After a minute he turned his head to press his cheek against Hanna's flesh. “I can't,” he said. He was dizzy with the effort of remembering—or the fear of it.

“We must know.”

“Why? If we only go to what used to be Croft, if I only look at it and leave—”

“Oh, Michael, Michael…” There were tears in her voice. “Can you be satisfied with that? Did all of them die, without exception?”

“I don't suppose so—” His hand tightened on her knee.

“Your baby sister?”

He whispered, “I don't know.”

“What did she look like, Mike?”

“Dark,” he said, “and round, with my eyes, Pavah's eyes. Maybe she's dead. Maybe they killed her, too.”

Now his voice was high and tight, his shoulders tense with held-back tears. She said with compassion, “We can stop. Do what you just said: go look at Croft, and leave.”

“Without word? I see now what you meant. Can I be there, where Carmina might be, without trying to find out? We'll have to go on,” he said, and knew as he said it that there had never been a choice from the beginning. If he had thought so, he had only been deceiving himself. He moved in the dark and drew an uneven breath. He felt Hanna's warmth under his head, and the soft hands, but suddenly their touch was nervous and uncertain; she felt what he felt, the abyss trembling beneath him once more, only now it was going to crack wide open.

“Mike—?”

Not even her hands could hold him up anymore. He took hold of them and pulled her down beside him, smiling in the dark. She said his name uneasily and he kissed her to quiet her, caressed her mechanically, forgot who she was; she was rigid and doubting, but he forgot to care. On the edge of annihilation he had no room to care about anything except one primal act that had nothing to do with mind or even being human, but with living forever in the face of death. Maybe she understood, because she let him do what he wanted, did not protest or push him away, even though at the end he forgot himself altogether and drove into her so violently that she cried out, more startled than hurt. When the spasm was over, he lifted his head and was full of fear as a moment before of desire, a man lost and unmade. He looked into Hanna's eyes and knew how greatly he was loved; but knew also that Hanna saw a stranger, no one she had ever known before.

On the edge of the precipice he said, “What's happening to me?”—and let go and plummeted down and down, and did not hear her start to cry.

*   *   *

Theo, finding Lise in tears one morning, extracted from her the admission that she was lonely for Michael, decided that
he would talk to Michael, and set off to find him. But at the door to Michael's room he hesitated; probably both Michael and Hanna were asleep. While he waited, unwilling to ring, the door opened anyhow. Hanna had sensed his presence and his wish; she stood blocking the door and looking at Theo with hard weary eyes. She had not been asleep. The room was dark, however, and Michael was an unmoving lump on the bed up against the wall of stars.

“You can't talk to him now,” Hanna said.

“When?” He was exasperated; Hanna was a usurper, she had no right to tell him when he could or could not see Michael.

The short, soft dialogue had waked Michael, though, and behind Hanna he sat up and said, voice dragging, “What is it? What's wrong?”

Theo started forward. Hanna after a moment stood aside. It had seemed that she might not; he was desperately uneasy.

“I have to talk to you about Lise,” he said.

“All right.” A light came on. Michael blinked in it, half-dazed. He looked so tired and tense that Theo was shocked.

He hid it as best he could and explained his errand. Michael listened, but it was not the old Michael; only half his attention was in this room; he met Theo's eyes only once or twice, and his gaze was bleary. At the end there was a silence. Theo was going to ask if Michael had heard, had understood, but then Michael said, “I can't do anything about it.”

It was a wounding blow, but Theo did not know that at once because he could not believe that what it sounded like was what Michael really meant. He said, “You don't have to
do
anything. Just spend a little time with her.”

“I can't,” Michael said, not looking at Theo. “I don't have anything left.”

Theo turned without another word and started out. Hanna still waited by the door. He said tightly, “Now I want to talk to you.”

She said indifferently, “All right.”

“Not here.”

“All right.”

She followed him out and shut the door. There was no further sound from inside the room. Theo said, shaking with anger, “What are you doing to him?”

“He's doing it to himself. And to me.”

“What is it? What is it, then?”

“Memory.” An odd expression flickered across her face. If this had been anybody but Hanna, he would have thought it was helplessness.

“Why don't you stop it? Does he want to go on?”

“Sometimes he does. Sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes I want to stop. Sometimes I don't. What I want doesn't matter anyway. He doesn't need the trance any more, he doesn't need me. He's half in it all the time. What do you want me to do? I can't do anything.”

Theo began to pound the wall with his fist, slowly and not very hard, though he wanted to strike hard enough to put his hand through it. Hanna must know how angry he was, but she watched him impassively, indifferently.

“You have to stop him,” Theo said. “Can't you see what it's doing to him?”

She said, “I see it. But he believes he is being made whole. It cannot happen without great pain. But he is grateful. Even in his pain he is grateful.”

“Gratitude for pain—there are words for that. Sick words. Why can't you let him be what he was?” Theo spoke with anguish. “You loved what he was.”

“What he was?” she said. “It was an artificial construct. Not wholly. He could not have made himself what he was without a foundation. But he did not remember the foundation. Now he does. Having remembered so much he will remember the ending: all the grief. It will get worse before it gets better.”

“You're both crazy,” Theo said, convinced of it. “I don't know who got crazy first, but you spend all your time in each other's heads and you've both got it. You make Henrik look good. I'm not going to let you keep doing it.”

“I would stop him. If I could. If he would.”

There was that look again; now he was sure it was helplessness, that Hanna had lost control of the situation.

He cursed her for starting it. “I'll stop him, then,” he said.

“How?” said Hanna. Her eyes and voice were empty of feeling.

He did not know. Possibilities of violence and treachery went through his mind. But he knew that Hanna saw them, and his own thoughts sickened him.

Hanna turned her back on him and went into Michael's room without speaking. Theo, with nothing else left to do, returned to Lise and consoled her as well as he could.

—the man who came from the Post at the end of fall, he had the lightest skin I'd ever seen—

(Michael had begun to tremble, his face was slick with sweat, his whole body soaked.

“No,” Hanna said. “No. Come out of it.”

He wouldn't. He had learned more from Hanna than either of them had thought he could at the start. He could stay in this state without her, and he would not come out.)

—came to our house, it was Pavah he had to talk to. Greeted him as if they knew each other, “Alex” he called Pavah, Pavah must have dealt with him before. There were two other men in the wagon outside. They got out and walked around, stamping their feet to keep warm. But there wasn't anything for them to see, it was a cold day and most everybody was inside, those who hadn't been had gone in when they saw the wagon come. It was long as our house, much too big for three men, but most of it was made to carry goods. The man who came in, I never heard what he was called. They met in the room at the front of the house, and Mirrah took Carmina to another room and they stayed there, Mirrah not saying anything; but Pavah didn't send me to join them.

The man didn't talk very long. It was the same thing Joan had said. They needed to open up more land, they needed farmers to work it. It didn't sound so bad. There was money to be made, the man said; there would be gold. Croft never had much of that, only from grain we sold outside the village, passing through so many hands that not much gold filtered back.

“Who would own the land?” Pavah said.

“Who owns it here? No one. Everyone. What's the difference?”

“It's a good life here,” Pavah said.

“No difference,” the man said. “Maybe better for you, as middleman. You've got the blood. That could make it profitable for you.”

“It never did me much good before. It doesn't matter; it's
Croft I speak for. And Croft's decided. We have no wish to go. We will not go.”

“Winter's hard here,” the man said. “You spend it cutting wood just to keep warm. In the east there are easier ways.”

“I know,” Pavah said. “I smell it sometimes. But only in bad dreams. Give me woodsmoke. Keep the gas.”

In the other room Carmina began to cry. She hardly ever did that, and not for long; she'd wanted to come to Pavah, most likely, and Mirrah had held her back. I heard Mirrah talking to her, getting her interested in something else, and the crying stopped. The man said. “You've another, then? Felicitations, Alex. Another fine son? Will this one take your place when you're gone? Who'll speak for Croft when you're gone?”

There was something in his face I didn't understand but Pavah did. Something else came into Pavah's eyes, it took a minute to see what it was, I'd seen him angry so seldom.

“You're a fool if you think it matters who you deal with,” he said. “I tell you I speak for Croft. Not only for myself, though my neighbors' wishes are mine, too. We knew you'd been to Sutherland. We decided what to say if you came here. Now you've heard what we say. Be on your way.”

“I would see Lillin first, with your permission,” said the man; he meant Mirrah.

“I do not tell her who she may see. If she wanted to see you, she would come out. You've outstayed your welcome. This is my house. I'm master here. I bid you go.”

The man left then, saying nothing. I thought Pavah had driven him out, and I was proud. But when the wagon had gone and Mirrah came out, Pavah said, “He went too quietly,” and Mirrah whispered, “Yes? Why?”

“I must go to Sutherland,” Pavah said.

“Now, Alek?”

“As soon as we've met. To carry the news to Joan and Elot, to see if he's been there and what he said.”

And so we all went to the moothall, and there was worry enough but no one knew what to do, except wait. Pavah went to Sutherland, and—